[...]... Society of Sugar Cane Technologists, 6 Sugarcane, Second Edition Edited by Glyn James Copyright © 2004 by Blackwell Science Ltd a Blackwell Publishing Company Chapter 2 Plant Improvement of Sugarcane Nils Berding, Mac Hogarth and Mike Cox INTRODUCTION GERMPLASM Sugarcane breeding is widely acknowledged as the principal method for improving productivity in most sugarcane industries of the world It contributes... source of food in Melanesia 8 Sugarcane THE BOTANY OF SUGARCANE Sugarcane is a tall perennial tropical grass, which tillers at the base to produce unbranched stems from 2 to 4 m or more tall, and to around 5 cm in diameter It is cultivated for these thick stems, stalks or canes, from which the sugar is extracted Barber(23) in India and Jeswiet(24) in Java pioneered the study of sugarcane s morphology Artschwager... among sugarcane clones The use of molecular markers to discriminate among cultivars in other major crops (e.g maize Zea mays L.) is well proven (21) The potential power of molecular markers for discriminating among sugarcane clones is obvious Not so obvious is the necessity for sugarcane improvement scientists to have such a tool available for use in germplasm collection management Two examples are: Sugarcane. .. adapted germplasm Sugarcane improvement, by this definition, has been by incorporation Progress from nobilisation breeding from 1960 to 1987 is summarised by Berding & Roach (9) Plant Improvement of Sugarcane History As indicated above, modern sugarcane clones are the products of complex interspecific hybridisation among several Saccharum species The concept of interspecific hybridisation in sugarcane originated... others below the main nodal region The bases of the panicle branches are swollen and thinly covered with short white hairs At Sugarcane Fig 1.8 Flowering sugarcane (Photograph: A.L Down.) the base of the panicle the primary branches are about 15 cm long, but shorter above The secondary branches tend to arise in two rows, alternately along the primary branches, and may carry tertiary branches The ultimate... germinates better in light, it is placed on the surface of sterilised compost in shallow trays, and kept at high humidity The seedlings can be transplanted about 6 weeks after germination Sugarcane CULTIVATION OF SUGARCANE Sugarcane is grown commercially in the tropics and subtropics, and is known to be one of the oldest cultivated plants in the world The boundaries of its cultivation are shown by van Dillewijn... known as ratooning At the end of the cycle, the crop is ploughed out and the field is replanted more or less immediately with sugarcane or another crop, or after a period of fallow Sugarcane cultivation and the slave trade From the early sixteenth century, the development of the sugarcane industry in the Caribbean, and the tropical and subtropical regions of North, Central, and South America were dependent... officinarum L) Nature (London), 161 14 Barber, C.A (1920) The origin of sugarcane International Sugar Journal, 22 15 Jeswiet, J (1929) The development of selection and breeding of the sugarcane in Java Proceedings of the International Society of Sugar Cane Technologists, 3 16 Parthasarathy, N (1946) The probable origin of North Indian sugarcanes Journal of the Indian Botanical Society, 133 17 Mukherjee,... taxonomic description of sugarcane varieties Proceedings of the International Society of Sugar Cane Technologists, 6 28 Artschwager, E (1948) Vegetative characteristics of some wild forms of Saccharum and related grasses US Department of Agriculture Technical Bulletin 29 van Dillewijn, C (1952) Botany of Sugarcane Chronica Botanica, Waltham, MA 30 Evans, H (1935) The root system of the sugarcane I Method... of the New World came from sugarcane growing in Madeira and Spain The variety became known as Creole, and was the basis for the development of the sugar industry in that region until the second half of the eighteenth century Otaheite was the first of the noble canes to be cultivated on a worldwide scale It was the only variety grown in Mauritius from the An Introduction to Sugarcane establishment of . the New World until Columbus introduced it on his second voyage in 1493. Re- turning Crusaders brought news of cane sugar to Sugarcane, Second Edition Edited by Glyn James Copyright © 2004 by. Patents Act 1988, without the prior permission of the publisher. First edition published 1984 by Longman Group Ltd Second edition published 2004 by Blackwell Science Ltd Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication. vi Preface vii 1 An Introduction to Sugarcane 1 The origins and spread of sugarcane 2 Movement and development of the noble canes 3 The ancestry of cultivated sugarcane 3 The early commercial cane